After ten years of non-stop parish ministry I was beginning to find myself going through the motions of a busy priest but increasingly out of touch with God.  This three-month sabbatical has been a wonderful experience of rediscovery.  It has come in three parts: a retreat in North Wales, a family trip to New Zealand and an individual visit to our link parish in Mozambique.  Each has helped to put me back in touch with the ever-present reality of God in my life and in the world.

Rediscovering God through Prayer: St Beuno’s

An eight-day individually guided retreat at St Beuno’s Retreat Centre in North Wales was the perfect way to start my sabbatical.  Apart from meeting with my guide each morning, it was conducted in silence.  This gave me the chance to slowly brood over passages from scripture and roam the surrounding countryside.  Through the psalms in particular, I realised that God had been there all along despite my neglect, and was now prompting me to look at my past, not a very comfortable thing to do.  But knowing oneself goes hand-in-hand with knowing God and it felt like I was being renewed for a new phase of ministry.

St Beuno’s, an old Jesuit Seminary, was where Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote much of his best poetry.  Previously unintelligible to me, it began to make sense and resonate with me as I was walking the very same hills and vales in which it was composed.  Two lines in particular have stayed with me and encapsulate my subsequent experiences in New Zealand and Mozambique:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

For Christ plays in ten thousand places,

 lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his…

Rediscovering God through Family: New Zealand

New Zealand is certainly a land charged with the grandeur of God.  Part two of the sabbatical was a four-week family holiday in the North Island of this amazing country.  Exchanging our house and car with a Kiwi couple enabled us to explore a magical part of the world where we had no previous connections or experience.  It also allowed us to spend precious time together away from the demands of our normal lives.  Three themes summarised our tour: nature, culture and adventure.

The natural wonders included volcanic mountains, hot thermal pools, geysers erupting 20 metres high, a kaleidoscope of coloured mineral lakes, sandy beaches, steep gorges, waterfalls and the most amazing glow-worm caves.

The cultural highlights were a tour of a Moari village (with dancing and traditional meal), the Art Deco buildings of Napier, the wineries of Hawkes Bay, the museums and cafés of Wellington and a live Super 14 rugby match.

And, finally, the list of adventures: sea-kayaking, staying on a farm, horseriding, bombing down the side of a mountain on a luge (like a free-wheeling go-cart) and jetboating up a river gorge.

In short, it was an unforgettable month and all four of us would be hard-pressed to name our favourite activity.  But if pushed, Daniel would say Hot Water Beach (where you can burn your bottom in a freshly dug thermal pool in the sands); Evie would say horseriding; Jo the glowworms (although I suspect winning the luge race also tops her list); and I would be torn between the mountains and the rugby.

Rediscovering God through Church: Mozambique

Four days after returning from New Zealand on a gruelling 28-hour flight, I was back on a plane to Mozambique for a ten-day visit.  With hindsight, this wasn’t the best way to consolidate a wonderful family holiday or a restful sabbatical.  Given the opportunity again, I might have delayed this trip for another time, particularly since I was most certainly working in an official priestly capacity throughout my stay.

Nevertheless, it was an enthralling experience that has fired me up and I have returned with a longing to talk about this far-off country where ‘Christ is playing in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs and  lovely in eyes not his’.  Indeed, it is the dancing limbs and the lively faces that best tell the story and I was very pleased that I took a video camera.  A written report can’t do justice to the excitement of seeing brand new Anglican congregations in the first flush of their development. But I can at least describe my non-stop week.

I was based in the city of Chimoio in central Mozambique.  An Anglican congregation was established here 25 years ago and now has a substantial church building dedicated to St Bernard Mizeki. This is the mother church for a cluster of eight newer congregations spread across the surrounding province of Manica and is served by only two priests, one of whom, Fr Paulo Hansine, is also the Archdeacon. In 2007 the Chimoio Pastoral Zone was formally linked with St Luke’s and Christ Church, Chelsea as part of the ALMA diocesan link.  I was visiting as a formal representative from Chelsea.

My first and last nights, however, were spent 40km up the road at a non-Anglican church project called Vila Maninga which is comprised of an orphanage, old-people’s home, primary school and facilities for ministerial training conferences.  I have been involved in this project for a long time and last visited 12 years ago when it was first being built.  It was wonderful to now see it prospering with a happy family of 30 orphans.  It was also good to see the fire-damaged homes fully repaired and upgraded thanks to our Parish Lent Appeal in 2007, as well as a new water-tower going up, again funded by a more recent collection in Chelsea.

The intervening six days were spent as a guest of the Anglican church, staying with friendly English-speaking hosts from the congregation in Chimoio who had a very smart home on the outskirts of the city.  Each day Fr Paulo picked me up (often at 7.30am) in his 4x4.  The itinerary was exhausting, visiting all nine churches plus a school and a leprosy project.

The first day, a Sunday, started with a 3.5 hour Eucharist at the main church in Chimoio.  This was quite an occasion with visiting choirs boosting the fabulous home choir (essentially the youth group).  Before, during and after the liturgy no opportunity is lost for striking up a new song, always with effortless harmony, accompanied by gentle drums and maracas, and often performed with exuberant dancing and clapping.  By contrast, the liturgy is very ordered and Catholic in style, but that seems to blend very naturally with the extempore singing.

During the week, I preached at three other eucharists. Each followed the same pattern with a lengthy mass, exuberant singing and numerous presentations with gifts of wood carvings, tall sugar canes, bags of maize and even live chickens, followed by the obligatory shared lunch of chicken and rice (or sadza, a maize-meal porridge, best eaten with fingers!)  Even in the churches we visited without celebrating mass, the congregations still turned out in force, sang lots and made generous presentations.

Seeing that each congregation seems to be attracting lots of people with no previous connection with the Anglican church, I asked Fr Paulo what reasons he would give for such growth.  His answer was threefold.

Firstly, he talked about the liturgy and how the order of it contrasted with the countless small Pentecostal churches that have spread in recent years.  I could quite see how the colourful mix of catholic ritual and exuberant singing contributes to an appealing sense of both holiness and joy.

Secondly, he mentioned the catholicity of the Anglican Communion.  By this he means the sense of being part of a bigger network with an international identity and an external structure of authority. I could begin to see why our parish link and my visit meant so much to them, since we represented this world-wide connection that obviously counts for a lot.

Thirdly, he stressed the fact that the Anglican church was seen to put its faith into action.  The social programmes that they were heavily involved in included an HIV counselling project, supporting a group of orphans through secondary schooling, and training prisoners on day-release.

So, although the Anglican Church is a relative newcomer to this part of Mozambique, it is held in very high regard, second only to the Roman Catholics. I came away hugely buoyed by the energy, optimism and generosity I encountered in each of the nine churches, a mood that seems to be reflected in the country as a whole as it pulls itself off the bottom of the world’s prosperity rankings. Above all, I felt immensely privileged and hugely excited to be witnessing the very beginnings of a new network of churches in a part of the world previously untouched by the Anglican Communion with its unique and generous brand of Christianity.  More than once I had a sense of what it must have been like in the early church as the Holy Spirit worked through very ordinary people in spreading the church in a wonderfully haphazard but authentic fashion.  Christ is indeed playing in ten thousand places and is particularly lovely in the limbs and eyes of our brothers and sisters in this wonderful part of the world that is most certainly charged with the grandeur of God.

[For a more detailed report of my visit to Mozambique visit the parish webiste: www.chelseaparish.org]

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